


Then she closes her eyes

by Aledane



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Annie-Centric, F/M, Female Titan Arc, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-05 08:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14613639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aledane/pseuds/Aledane
Summary: Annie and her insomnia. They haven't yet invented a cure for guilt so she does as she can.





	Then she closes her eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Et elle ferme les yeux](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12813363) by [Aledane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aledane/pseuds/Aledane). 



> Hi everybody !  
> I'm not a native English speaker so tell me if there's any spelling error.

Annie is freezing under her worn sheets, staring at the slight ray of moonlight flowing through her small window. It’s late: no eight-year-old girl should be awake at this hour. She must not be like the others ‒ that’s what her father says when he has her running in the wood near their house until she loses her breath.

On the other side of the room, her father’s chest is rising up regularly, sighting and snoring. She has grown used to these nightly noises ‒ she wonders if she would be able to sleep without them. It isn’t what keeps her awake. No, which is paralysing her isn’t really named. It comes and goes, a weight on her throat and a fear in her head. She’s scared of the dark, Annie, or rather of what hides there.

(She’s too young to know that the worst is elsewhere, behind high walls who make cities look like jails)

Her father looks like he forgot what it’s like to wait, terrified in the dark who seems about to swallow you whole. He puts his hand on her shoulder and tell her to focus on her feet’s position compared to her shoulders. The most important is to be able to defend yourself, he says. Nightmares are nothing else than dreams. Annie disagrees but she has learnt since long to stay quiet.

If she searches deep enough, she finds foggy memories of a women’s perfume and a hand stroking tenderly her forehead, but these fading feelings aren’t enough to scatter the shadows who nest under her bed. Her mother had fair hair, that’s all she remembers ‒ it won’t make her feel less afraid.

So, Annie’s cowering in her bed, looking for a sleep that is as always not coming, maybe because it fears as much as her the monsters in the dark.

Then she’s closing her eyes.

* * *

 

Nights at Trost hum with crowd and voices, drinking songs and military curses. Annie is twisting and twirling on the 105th Cadet Corps’ tough mattress, frowning. Past years haven’t cured her insomnia, far from it.

Her comrades haven’t this problem: Sasha is snoring right below her, Mikasa is laying in her bed like a corpse, stiff and silent, Christa is shrinking her scrawny shape against the wall and Ymir is sleeping the sleep of the just under her blankets.

Annie wonders how it feels, going to sleep without thinking that in the morning she may have to kill every living being in the camp. That’s surely what the call peace. She isn’t very familiar with the concept. The only relief she knows is the one that comes at dawn, as Reiner’s powerful voice lowers to a whispering tone and state: “We have survived one day more.”

Honestly, Annie don’t feel so surviving. Even “living” is a big word. She’s so cold in the bright sun that even the shy brushings of Berthold’s hand against hers aren’t enough to warm her up.

And yet, he’s the last one she’s willing to smile at, now that her father’s gone and that the world rests on their shoulders. She feels almost fine under his tall shade ‒ calm, protected, serene if she allowed herself to. The least dark nights she has ever seen are the ones they spent with Reiner in the endless plains beyond the Wall Maria, curled to protect themselves from cold.

For once, she was hot.

So, Annie’s picturing Berthold by her side, his huge arm around her waist and his long fingers in her fair hair. She’s picturing that she can catch her breath just for a moment, and that deep inside of her, there’s something which still want to live.

That’s a lie but she has nothing better.

Then, she’s closing her eyes.

* * *

 

Annie has never liked Stohess. Life’s there has something far too comfortable to be real, like a silky covering laid on a rotting carcass. The beds are too big, the food too bountiful and it sticks ice shards in her belly.

The girl who shares her room is a mutt: she wonders how she could be ranked well enough to join the Military Police (it’s a gratuitous cruel opinion but Annie has never pretended to be a nice girl). The others members of the Brigade aren’t better. The best lounge or live the good life downtown. The worst, those of whom she must be careful, hide things in their closets that can get her cold feet.

She spends her time waiting for Reiner’s scribbled messages supposed to indicate the procedure to follow. Do this, Annie. Investigate that, Annie. You’re a warrior, do not forget that. His writing is small, all angles and harsh inflections, halfway between an order and a threat. She hates it. It’s not like she needs a wake-up call, she knows very well what’s her duty, and feeling that kind of thing through the only means of communication she’s still keeping with her allies is an unpleasant sensation.

Once only, Berthold wrote the letter. She immediately recognised the round and slender line of his words, so familiar that it shoved a strange warmth in her chest. She was supposed to burn the letters, but she has kept that one.

Most of the time, Annie can bear the secrets and the lies and the weight of the truth nobody knows about. But at night, when the sleep makes as always himself desired, she needs this paper-printed hint of softness to carry on. So, she’s reading again and again the tenderness that Berthold is the only one who can give her.

Then, she’s closing her eyes.

* * *

 

Annie dreams (when she’s able to sleep) of a watercolour world. Blue skies, green fields, pink flowers. She dreams of a reality where they don’t have to live in a cage and where she’s allowed to bury her face in Berthold’s neck.

And what she’s willing to do for this dream, it’s terrifying.

Around her and the Titan that has replaced Eren, there are cries of civilians and smells of smoke. She doesn’t care: it’s not her first time killing. But it might be the last, and that, it creeps her out.

So, she’s making decision. Nothing can break her ice and there’re secrets she must hide: their plans, their ideas, (Berthold’s letter against her chest). There’s no other way out.

It’s her duty, she’s not afraid.

(She’s terrified)

Eren’s fist’s getting closer and closer and she’s just having time of making the ice grow before he’s too close.

Then, she’s closing her eyes.


End file.
